Ann Hornaday believes that film, as a medium, is engineered to create awe in audiences.
Whether it is the tracking shot that opens the 1958 classic “Touch of Evil,” or the through-the-restaurant one-take from “Goodfellas,” technical brilliance can capture audience attention. But the camera is not the only thing in that moment that inspires awe.
“The emotion of it is awe-some,” said Hornaday. “The way that a single shot like that can immerse you into a moment and communicate the emotion so thoroughly — I think that is awesome.”
Movie critic for The Washington Post, Hornaday will close out the Week Seven theme, “Wonder and Awe — A Week Celebrating Chautauqua’s Sesquicentennial” with a lecture at 10:45 a.m. today in the Amphitheater. Her book, Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies, explores film literacy and delivers an insight into what connects people to this art form, and she’s currently at work on a book about the making of “All the President’s Men.” Today marks her second time contributing to the morning lecture platform; in 2018, she gave a solo presentation in a week on “Documentary Film as Facilitator: Storytelling, Influence and Civil Discourse,” then interviewed “Atomic Homefront” director Rebecca Cammisa the next day in the Amp, and Grace Lee — the filmmaker behind “American Revolutionary” and “K-Town ’92” — the day after.
Hornaday describes herself as an “accidental film critic.” Growing up, she did not watch a lot of movies and graduated from Smith College with a degree in government. During her time as a freelance writer, she got the opportunity to write about movies in several publications, including The New York Times, which started her career as a film critic.
Today, “what I would like to do is trace my own relationship to awe on screen, and how that’s evolved,” she said. “It has changed since I first began writing about movies 30 or so years ago.”
In that time, audiences have changed, too; the past few years have sparked a debate about the role of film criticism. Several critics, from The New York Times to The Guardian, have written about the diminishing importance of this art form in the wake of movie influencers’ impact over social media.
The movie industry and the journalism industry are in the same boat in terms of audience, Hornaday said. Similar to fewer people seeking out traditional forms of news media, fewer people are connecting with the film critics who write for them.
“We are both industries that are used to having the audience come to us, and we are no longer in that position,” she said.
Smaller films have also faced issues of relevance when competing with bigger-than-ever Hollywood-backed movies at the box office.
“(At this time), it’s easy to feel like the movies just aren’t connecting with you personally anymore, or aesthetically,” Hornaday said.
Several films made those connections in 2023, from big blockbusters to smaller independent ventures. Hornaday cites the hype around Barbenheimer — a portmanteau of the movies “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” that released on the same day — as an example of audiences turning out for original films screened in cinemas. For her, it was exciting that films across genres came “from a place of honest exploration, humanism, caring,” and left impressions on audiences.
“Even mainstream, commercial, escapist movies, when done well with honesty and a full heart … can give you a sense of connection and transcendence,” she said.
According to Hornaday, a good film transcends its labels and places the viewer in its world. “Straight Outta Compton,” the 2015 movie about N.W.A, did that successfully by knowing that it would have a strong, core fanbase, and delivered an authentic portrayal of the band’s rise to fame, resulting in a broader appeal. “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” both found wider audiences by being well-made films that were able to transcend their specific genres.
“We’re often having conversations about ‘finding the audience’ — you don’t want to be fan service all the time,” Hornaday said. “You want to have some kind of objective standards of quality.”
When determining the quality of a film, Hornaday asks three questions: What was the filmmaker trying to achieve, did they achieve it, and was it worth achieving? For her, the quiet 2023 drama “The Holdovers” answers these questions in the affirmative, as does the 2008 superhero blockbuster “Iron Man.” These movies’ ability to transcend comes through in audiences’ relationships with them, even months or years after their release.
Last year was a widely successful one for films, she said, which convinced her that young people — the majority of theater-going audiences — have sophisticated taste and are still interested in cinema. The popularity of apps like Letterboxd, that are made for viewers to express their film opinions, prove the same.
“(Letterboxd is) growing a whole community of younger viewers who do care about criticism and want to have that kind of elevated dialogue,” she said.
With young people getting into movies and filmmakers continuing to make films that transcend and inspire honest reactions from audiences, Hornaday is optimistic about the future of cinema.
